Colby Quarterly Volume 17 Issue 2 June Article 7 June 1981 "Time is a Casket": Love and Temporality in Robinson's Tristram S. L. Clark Julian N. Wasserman Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/cq Recommended Citation Colby Library Quarterly, Volume 17, no.2, June 1981, p.112-116 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ Colby. It has been accepted for inclusion in Colby Quarterly by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ Colby. Clark and Wasserman: "Time is a Casket": Love and Temporality in Robinson's Tristram "Time Is a Casket"; Love and Temporality in Robinson's Tristram by s. L. CLARK and JULIAN N. WASSERMAN ODERN redactors of the medieval Tristan legend generally com­ M ment in some adverse way upon the society in which the unhappy lovers find themselves. The lovers' exaltation may be contrasted to the jealousy and pettiness of Cornish society in Thomas Hardy's Famous Tragedy ofthe Queen ofCornwall, or the sad fate of Tristan and Isolde will serve as yet another depressing portent in Tennyson's version of Arthur's fall. The tension between the lovers and the society with which they are at odds finds unusual expression, however, in Edwin Arlington Robinson's Tristram,l for this poem separates the lovers from the rest of society not because of society's blind ignorance of what Tristan-Iove 2 entails, but rather because of the fundamentally different approaches to time held by the lovers and society. In other words, all members of soci­ ety in Robinson's poem are well aware of the consuming nature of Tris­ tram's and Isolt's passion; even Andred, reptile that he is,3 recognizes that Isolt has given herself over completely to Tristram (p. 63), and Mark, too, comes to acknowledge his wife's and nephew's love at the end of the poem when he allows Tristram to return to the Queen at Tin­ tagel (p. 178) .. However, Mark's progress to this point is couched in terms of his having overcome past attitudes; he states how he feels "now," repeating the term several times as he brings his view 0 f Tris­ tram's and Isolt's love from "once" to "a month ago" to "now," and then goes on to assume that the love will continue into the future ("All I ask / Is that I shall not see him" [po 178]). For Mark, and for the other members of society in this poem, love is time-bound. One can look back upon its occurrence or posit its recurrence, but one can never escape its essential temporality. For Tristram and Isolt, however, love occurs in time but goes beyond time. The manner in which Robinson effects the distinction between those who see love in time and those who see love in time but not of it can best 1. We cite from the following edition: Edwin Arlington Robinson, Tristram (New York: Macmillan, 1927). 2. We use the term "Tristan-love" after W. T. H. Jackson, Anatomy ofLove: The Tristan ofGott­ fried von Stra,Pburg (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1971), p. 268. We should also note that we will refer to Robinson's characters by the names he gives them (Tristram and Isolt), but will refer to tradi­ tional characters in the medieval legend by conventional forms (Tristan and Isolde), in order to distin­ guish them from Robinson's characters. 3. Tristram, pp. 63, 195, where Andred is explicitly called a reptile. 112 Published by Digital Commons @ Colby, 1981 1 Colby Quarterly, Vol. 17, Iss. 2 [1981], Art. 7 S. L. CLARK and JULIAN N. WASSERMAN 113 be approached through the characterization of the woman who loves Tristram but does not experience the love Tristram shares with Isolt of Ireland. Isolt of the White Hands is obsessed with time past and time future and walks an uneasy line in the meagre present she shares with Tristram; her existence is alternately a backward-looking, a remem­ brance of Tristram's past actions (pp. 9, 13), and a forward-looking, ever to the north (pp. 92, 98, 99, 114, 122, 201, 209), to the sea that will bring Tristram back or will keep him from her. Even in the two years in which she has Tristram with her in Brittany, there is recurrent reference to the power of time past and the uncertainty of time future. Isolt thus soberly states upon Tristram's departure for Camelot, commenting on his love for Isolt of Ireland: So long ago, Tristram, that you have lived for nothing else Than for a long ago that follows you To sleep, and has a life as long as yours. (p. 118) At the end of the poem, Isolt's father attempts to teach his daughter's eyes "to see I Before them, not behind" (p. 205), but she has prepared only for a future with Tristram. Although she knows and knew when she first met Tristram that his heart was with Isolt of Ireland, she is will­ ing to accept partial, rather than total, devotion from him. Only upon Tristram's death can she reluctantly admit that she will "be Queen / Of Here or There, may be-sometime" (p. 205). Robinson thus presents her as a woman who clings to a man as to a keepsake, and whose far­ seeing abilities (p. 92) may well stem from the fact that she feels that her future with Tristram is contained within her past with him; she is contin­ ually remembering and waiting, so that even during her two year mar­ riage to Tristram4 she is said to be waiting (p. 95) for the time when Tristram's past with Isolt of Ireland will claim him. Isolt of the White Hands knows that Tristram's past will shape his future, because she knows the power which Isolt of Ireland has over him, but she cannot share their love and can only look toward days and nights lined up in a row (pp. 201, 203). Isolt of the White Hands' moments with Tristram are never timeless, as are those which he spends with Isolt of Ireland; since Isolt of the White Hands is caught up in time, she can only wait in it but cannot go beyond it. To be sure, Isolt of the White Hands is not alone in her vigil; Isolt of Ireland waits as well. Described as being "alone with time" (p. 123), she notes: "I have been alone with time so long / That time and I are strangers" (p. 134). Like Isolt of the White Hands, Isolt of Ireland is preoccupied with the past and with the future. In the former instance, 4. This marriage is described, significantly, in the middle of the work; Isolt of Brittany's past with \Tristram is detailed in the work's opening passages, and it is with her musings on time past in time future that the poem ends. https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/cq/vol17/iss2/7 2 Clark and Wasserman: "Time is a Casket": Love and Temporality in Robinson's Tristram 114 COLBY LIBRARY QUARTERLY she rages against the time lost to her and Tristram, time when they could have loved but did not (p. 50). In the latter case she expresses awareness that the future holds death and that there is indeed little time left on earth. She tells Tristram at Joyous Gard: I am not going to be old. There is a little watchman in my heart Who is always telling me what time it is. (p. 159) However, unlike Isolt of the White Hands, her experiencing of tempo­ rality entails an extra dimension, that of the transcendence of time. Tristan-love in this poem, in fact, is detailed largely with respect to the lovers' unique stance toward time. They are in it but not of it. Thus, while they chafe under lengthy separations, they partake in a sense of rapturous timelessness at Joyous Gard and, moreover, quite frequently view this transcendence of time as one sustaining feature of their rela­ tionship. Robinson will contrast the lovers' attitude to that of a man such as Gawaine, who can never experience a devotion such as that of Tristan and Isolde. Gawaine sees time as a period to be filled up, for he sees love in terms of appetite. Since he marks his time in terms of love affairs, he cannot fathom Tristram's devotion to Isolt of Ireland. He muses: Why must a man, where there are loaves and fishes, See only as far as one crumb on his table? Why must he make one morsel of a lifetime? (p. 171) For Gawaine, time is a vessel to be filled with adventures, compliments, and love affairs, and then to be drained to the dregs. This attitude, which will deviate so sharply from that of the lovers, is further mirrored in Gouvernail's somewhat dour assessment of the march of time: Time is a casket Wherein our days are covered certainties That we lift out of it, one after one (p. 82) Gouvernail's statement is particularly suggestive, however, for the idea of precious things being contained in a protective enclosure and brought out one by one is countered by both the regularity of the removal and the double meaning of the casket. Tristram and Isolt, as "the time-sifted few that leave the world" (p. 83), will share a love that both results in death, in the casket, and goes beyond death. Gouvernail's contention that time is the enclosure which holds the days of one's life firmly places existence in time, so that one's life is viewed with respect to time.